Every now and again I really miss living in San Francisco.
Author: Bryant
Credit where credit is due on tsunami relief: Bush is sending an aircraft carrier and working closely with several nations in the region on relief efforts. Also, as expected, there will be future monetary support as the U.S. Agency for International Development requests additional funds.
I still think it’d be a good gesture to cancel the inauguration and redirect those funds, but that’s me.
Li asks, “I’ve often said that one of the best science-fiction authors whose work you probably aren’t reading is Connie Willis. Along the same lines, what’s the best game that I’m probably not playing?”
Well, I am reading Connie Willis, but I would recommend Primetime Adventures. It isn’t necessarily an easy game to figure out, but the screen presence and fan mail systems at the very least illuminate often under-considered aspects of roleplaying and at the best they produce some really fun play.
Hugh Hewitt has a fairly revealing piece this morning calling for reporters to answer a short questionnaire.
What questions would I like answered? Very simple ones: For whom did the reporter vote for president in the past five elections? Do they attend church regularly and if so, in which denomination? Do they believe that the late-term abortion procedure known as partial birth abortion should be legal? Do they believe same sex marriage ought to be legal? Did they support the invasion of Iraq? Do they support drilling in ANWR?
If I know the answers to those ten questions, I can quickly decide what degree of trust with which to approach a reporter’s reporting. Even “low trust” reporters can earn trust, of course, but degrees of suspicion are a fact of life. Only MSM pretends otherwise, and bloggers have exposed that pretension as the fiction it really is, even if most of MSM want to continue the charade.
Got that? His degree of trust in any given reporter depends on whether or not they believe same sex marriage should be legal. It depends on whether or not they support drilling for oil in ANWR. It depends on not only their church-going habits, but what denomination they belong to. Unitarian Universalists need not apply?
He sets up for the list of questions by noting that everyone brings baggage to the reporting of the news, and thus argues that if you’re not willing to reveal that baggage, you’re untrustworthy. But then he makes the jump to asserting that it’s not just the revelation of the baggage that matters, it’s what the baggage is. It’s not “if those ten questions are answered,” it’s “the answers to those ten questions.” This is no more and no less than an ideological-based test for reporters, and it’s disgusting.
[Ed: still with apologies to Television Without Pity. And to anyone who’s confused by this, actually…]
This week on Dungeon Majesty: Oliver suffers the slings and arrows of outrageous childhood, Cassie and Millie get hit on by a swim team, Alvin gets a job, Andrew uncovers secrets, and Ferdinand is mostly away this episode. We’re grumpy about that last.
Bush’s inauguration will cost between 30 and 40 million dollars, before the cost of security is added. We have, so far, sent around 15 million dollars in tsunami relief aid. Quite the contrast.
I’m fairly sure we’ll send more money over the course of the next month or so. I also think we’d earn a lot of good will if we cancelled the inauguration and put the unspent money towards relief. It would hurt some American companies, yes, but chances are nobody would die of it.
This entry is pretty much just the result of this post and this post in close proximity.
The University of California system has put around 1,400 academic books online; several hundred of them are available to the public. Chuck Jones, Mexican counter-culture in the 60s, 17th century French pamphlets, a pirate atlas, an 18th century Indian travel narrative, MacArthur in Japan, phew. Sorry, that got a little heady there.
[Ed: with apologies to Television Without Pity.]
Will Maggie Gyllenhaal free herself from an over-protective mother? Will Philip Seymour Hoffman overcome a slight case of being Philip Seymour Hoffman? Will Owen Wilson ever stop being cute, and/or find a distributor for his documentary? Will William H. Macy discover yet another way to lose an election? And most important, will your humble recapper be able to remain coherent despite continuous references to that geeky game she always ignored in high school? We won’t find out this week, except maybe for that last one, but at least the wheels will be in motion.
Green Ronin’s new Black Company worldbook makes me want to run a five session game during which the PCs lose. Gritty fantasy, city under siege, that sort of thing. What can you do before you die?
While it’s still fresh in my mind, and because I want to be an early adopter as far as observations on the Buckaroo Banzai homage go: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Wes Anderson comes from Houston. That makes Bottle Rocket a small jump, just a skip into the air and thump back down onto the pavement. Rushmore is more ambitious; it’s set in a world far away from Texas. But Wes Anderson did go to a Texan prep school. Not a huge leap. The Royal Tenenbaums? Now we’re talking; sure, it’s still in New York, but it’s further up, further separated from the world in which we live.
The Life Aquatic breaks the bonds of reality and soars.
Or separates; separation is certainly the theme. Steve Zissou and his wife, Steve Zissou and Ned Plimpton, Steve Zissou and the earth. (David Bowie songs and the English language.) People go to the sea, traditionally, to run away; I thought I saw some of that in this movie. It is on the surface an homage to Cousteau, but underneath that, I think Wes Anderson is using the undersea documentary genre as the largest signifier of Zissou’s isolation. Nothing’s more isolated than a submarine underwater.
Some feel that The Life Aquatic is too precious. I think it’s precious on purpose; I think that sense of separation we feel is intentional. It’s a way of getting us into Zissou’s head, aided and abetted by Bill Murray’s quietly ironic acting talent. Besides which, the 70s Merimekko aesthetic is beautiful. The only misstep is towards the end; there’s a scene in which Zissou learns something about forgiveness, as a result of which he learns something about the human touch. Sadly, it’s not quite enough to get us through the wall, perhaps because it’s set underwater.
On the other hand, the final homage to Buckaroo Banzai helps make the point. For a moment or two I was considering the entire movie as a remake of Buckaroo Banzai, but that’s wrong: the homage is a moment of contrast. The Hong Kong Cavaliers were a family in a way that Team Zissou was not through most of the movie. It’s not a key moment in the movie, but it’s a telling grace note.
Speaking of families, the movie is not the ensemble piece that The Royal Tenenbaums was. It’s a movie about Steve Zissou learning to — something. Not feel, not care about other people. Learning to express those things, perhaps. Learning to act on them? I think that last. So while all the supporting cast is great, it’s not their story. Jane Winslett-Richardson doesn’t get a resolution. I didn’t feel that was a flaw, mind you, I’d just hate for anyone to get their hopes up for the kind of complex interweave we’ve seen from Anderson elsewhere. It’s a different kind of movie, more an heir to Rushmore.
I had been feeling a little worried that the American magic realism directors were losing their touch, given that I thought Adaptation, I ♥ Huckabees, and Punch-Drunk Love were somewhat disappointing. (Not bad, but disappointing.) I am now reassured.